Wednesday, February 14, 2007

After a relatively painless border crossing, we were now in our 5th country. And you know what that means? Yes its time to go shopping for another sticker for my panniers.

But before all that, I notice a few differences between Peru and Ecuador. Firstly its very green and hill which I find rather agreeable however it seems to rain rather a lot here. Also, they seem to actually paint their roadhumps unlike Peru so you don´t trash your suspension or God forbid, forkseals. The folk out in the country seem to have pretty large houses, of the size that would cost 3-4ook in the UK while driving some rather new and shiny pickup trucks so it can´t be too bad. The people even wave and smileat us, something that seemed to fizzle out in Peru so its a nice change.

We pull in to Cuenca and immediately notice that it feels slightly Americanised with custom car shops and even flower shops. Its a lovely city and we find ourselve a great hostel with a beautiful garden area. I say its lovely, but the kids are little ba$tards. Its warming up to Carnival time and they´re getting their practice in at throwing water bombs at pedestrians, namely us. We first get hit from a car at traffic lights, Michelle is not happy as she´s wearing her new jeans she just bought. Later, as we are recovering from a near hit from 3 water balloons from a balcony, we walk round a corner and Michelle gets hit in the stomach with another one thanks to a drive-by. Its just not her day really. If we see any little kid with a water gun, they get met with an icy ´don´t even f&cking think about it´sort of look. Doesn´t work though.